


better than your dreams

by oonaseckar



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Coma, F/M, Gen, M/M, Sleep, Sleep Disorder, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 5,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22490971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Charles wakes up from a coma.  He's both lost and acquired a few things in the meantime.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Raven | Mystique & Charles Xavier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	1. sleep my little baby-oh

**Author's Note:**

> Work title is Dr Seuss. First chapter title is Neil Gaiman.

Charles wakes up to what should be any other ordinary morning, but it isn't. It isn't, at all. He wakes up, and it's not in his regular bed, a narrow single in the cramped apartment he shares with another college grad student, Hank, and two cats that are getting above themselves and starting to think that they own their roomies instead of the other way around. The one with a ton of genetics textbooks downloaded onto the tablet by his bedside, and a zillion running magazines under the bed.

No, instead he wakes to a hospital room, and crisp sheets and an i.v. in his arm, wires taped to his shoulder and his chest, beeping machines chattering to each other in cheerful incomprehensible machine code. The window is shut but there's a blue sky outside, he's in a single room, and he feels _terrible_. Terrible, absolutely lousy, every muscle aches, his bones ache, his eyes are so gummed up it's disgusting and his mouth tastes--

And a nurse walks in, examining the clipboard in her hands. Then she double-takes and looks at him, and she screams.

Fifteen minutes later he knows a lot more about the situation than he did when he woke up. He knows, even if he doesn't understand. He's been in a coma for nine months, after an accident on his bike, zipping through slow traffic on the bridge into work. Light enough that hope remained for him to wake, heavy enough that there was no certainty.

The staff are frantic, excited, happy, fiercely curious. They talk to him continuously, poke at him with needles and fingers, check his vitals, ask him how he feels, ask him formalized questions to check his mental status. Sometimes one of them laughs giddily. He guesses that on this ward they don't get good news too often.

“Your sister's down as your next of kin,” one pretty male nurse tells him breathlessly. “She's on her way: she's visited you every month, this entire time! She's going to be so excited!” That's Raven, his adopted sister, and yes, he remembers her fine.

Actually it stings a bit, that 'every month'. Every month? Of course, she lives a fair way out of town, a millennial hippie on a smallholding growing heirloom chillies and delicate blooms for chi-chi expensive farmer's markets. She's busy, she's occupied, she's... once a month? They're close, fond siblings. Or at least he thought so.

It's not the only thing he's worrying about, though. There's his job, too. It's worrying him more than is reasonable, considering he's a grad student and it's just a part-time gig doing a bunch of admin, sales calls and basic accounts for a local non-profit, more for something to put on his resume when he's graduated, than for the dough. Considering what non-profits pay, and all.

When you're in love with the boss, though, it makes it more of an issue, the thought that you've probably been politely and regretfully removed from the rolls of a company's employees. And Charles' heart absolutely sinks as that thought occurs to him. But it isn't as if he can ask about it: can't grab a nurse, politely, by the sleeve, and hiss urgently, “Look, I know you're busy taking my vitals and checking I know my own name, but would you mind looking in my file and seeing if there's any mention of me being let go from my job?”

It's not going to be a high priority for them, not like it is for him. And he can understand that: he just needs to know. He really, really, really needs to know.


	2. a dream is a wish your heart makes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, so much has changed. if Charles even _knew_...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Disney.

But the needles and the questions and the form-filling, the excited, bright-faced, happy nurses and medics milling in and out and around his hospital room, they just _continue_. And Charles lets it wash over him, because he's not feeling that great, honestly, a bit woozy in fact. He's not even paying enough attention to really register all the information and news he's being given. Until there's an extra stir of excitement, people running around and hissing at each other more than they already were. And then there's a crazy loud yelling irruption into his room, pushing past white coats and navy trousers and pin badges.

Oh, it's his sister, it's his Raven, and _gosh_ but he's glad to see her. Not that it's exactly comfortable, her arrival: she flings herself into the room, like a small, blonde excitable chihuahua, and throws herself up onto his bed. (Which is not accepted hospital policy, as two of the younger nurses attempt immediately to inform her, except that they get pulled back and hushed by the older nurse present and a doc, and anyway it's not like Raven would likely pay any attention to that bullshit.

And it's not really comfortable –- makes his bones creak and his muscles sore and also she nearly rolls over his arm where the I.v. line is inserted –- when she hugs him in a grip that could squash tin cans and barbells. But it's still pretty good, even though she's crying all over him and her sobs are a bit shrieky right in his apparently over-sensitive ears. One of the older nurses does, tactfully and gently, encourage her to sit up and perch on the edge of the bed instead, and that's better, but he still holds her hand and smiles up at her, which mostly seems to encourage her to fresh tears.

“Oh God. Charles, Charlie. I was beginning to think you were never going to wake up,” she wails, and there's fresh tears again, yes, but also a flood of anxious patting and enquiries about his state of health, to him and to the nurses and doctors. (Who are still loitering around cheerfully, enjoying the happy scene, having one good day in what has to be a daily sea of shit and misery. As well as still poking about and doing medical stuff, of course.)


	3. fragments and shivers of the heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never mind what Charles has forgotten. What if he's _been_ forgotten?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides.

He reassures her as far as he can: because although he honestly doesn't feel great –- which is hardly surprising after nine months of coma, no exercise, fed through an i.v., the whole thing –- he also doesn't feel awful, all things considered. (He's not relishing the thought of rehabilitation –- his legs feel like it's going to take some work to get them flexible and free again. But even so.)

But still it's hard to concentrate, to listen and reassure her, even without his mind feeling sort of floaty and experimentally uncertain, without a certain vagueness that probably comes from having received a good strong clunk on the head, hard enough to put him out for nine months. It's hard because of what he actually wants to say, and can't find the right moment to slip in, to make it as casual as he needs it to sound.

But in the end, after seconds and minutes, he can't help himself, and he just barges in with, “Raven, where's Erik?” And then he stops, and re-evaluates, and realizes that most people, newly awoken from coma, even ones who are concerned about their employment status, wouldn't put it _quite_ like that. But how _would_ they put it? Oh, yes, he thinks, slow and vague still: “Do I still have a job to go back to, do you know? With the non-profit?”

He isn't sure if he's adequately concealing just how hideously important it is, though. It's too much of a clutch of sharpened nails at his guts, to think that he might have lost it. What he might have lost, is Erik. Although Erik Lehnsherr isn't his to lose, not now and not then, never was. He's only the director of the foundation, focusing on Jewish charities, education regarding the Shoah and funding cases against Holocaust deniers, that, last thing he remembers, Charles was working a few hours for here and there. Not much more than a temp, barely out of intern stage as he finished up his masters. Erik was the director who took Charles under his wing, a little bit, gave him a few tips on his work, and on the business in general. Noticed him, chatted with him here and there through the day, maybe a little bit more than most senior directors would bother with the newest rawest member of staff. Nothing _improper_ about it, though: strictly business, but in a friendly way. And Erik's assistant, Scott Summers, had noticed, enough that he'd felt comfortable handing the odd errand over to Charles when he was smothered under his extensive workload. Delivering dry-cleaning to Lehnsherr's house, calling former contributors to squeeze them for donations, even picking up Lehnsherr's kids a couple of times when his ex-wife re-scheduled visitations at the last minute.


	4. the war against reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles can remember being an absolute fool. Or maybe he hasn't been foolish enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Lewis Carroll.

See, Erik had been just that bit too kind, and Charles himself had been just that bit too lost, adrift in that interim bardo world not quite fully stepped out of the college environment, not quite fully yet set foot in the working workaday world. Too kind, and too (and Charles forced himself to be honest) too hot, really, honestly. Reddish-fair hair, and a lean spare torso that seemed stronger than anyone not weighted down with crab-like musculature could reasonably be, greenish eyes that gave Charles quick looks and looked away, almost shy. He had the cutest shy smile, too: brisk at first sight, then turning a little tentative.

Not that Charles had been fool enough to take any of this at more than surface level, or to believe that any of it was actively directed at him. He got too used to fielding chores and collecting packages, while Lehnsherr answered calls from his ex-wife, sounded alert and friendly and reasonable, like a guy who could still be buddies with his ex even while they had property and kids and business shares to sort out and navigate around.

He was such a grown-up. Feeling himself still gangling and uncertain, grown but not exactly mature and sensible, for Charles it was an attraction that pulled him in before he knew it. And then it was too late, because the minute you're querying with yourself if you have a new crush, then the answer is automatic, it's a foregone conclusion, and you're doomed.

He'd kept it under wraps, though. He hadn't made an idiot of himself, thank God. Although talking about it –- in his own head –- as if it's something in the far distant past, doesn't really express how he's feeling. Because after all, for him, it's only yesterday. He doesn't really properly remember an accident, he's already explained to the sympathetic and concerned staff: he has a vague impression of speed and pain and a muffled thump, somewhere in his head, but it's like his mind skips over it, a flaw in an old vinyl longplayer, and abruptly switches to something else instead, as soon as he tries to think about it. And barring that blank period after, the last thing he remembers is working at the Jewish Studies Community Support Foundation, and feeding his cats, and running the track every weekend, reading relevant books and working on his portfolio and--


	5. let go of those memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \- let go, let go of the past, let go, let go or _begin all over again --_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Haruki Murakami.

And a lot of obsessing about Erik Lehnsherr, but the less he broods on that, the better. That was his life, what feels like yesterday: and as long as he can get that life back, just the way it was then, that's fine by him. All the rest of it, the stupid crushy longing and --


	6. Chapter 6

Erik has a fixed appointment, Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings, and nothing can be allowed to get in the way of his attendance. Nothing: not his regular work at the trust. not managing the two restaurants he inherited from his parents. Not the semi-pro band he forms a loose part of, with gigs and rehearsals and local weddings and parties to play for. Not his large, pushy extended family, who are into his business in every imaginable way possible, every cousin, aunt and in-law wanting to know why and how he's doing every damn thing that he does. (And his mother, Edie, at this point has roughly the full details regarding his fixed, immutable schedule points, and awards him a free pass. Which is a very near unheard of special exception.)

Not even his kids get in the way. Although they are the light of his heart, and the one thing that would, if required, take precedence over his sacred Wednesdays and Sundays. But there's no question of that happening. Thing is, they love Charles too. Or they used to. Back when he could love them _back_.


	7. Chapter 7

_(Charles is vaguely aware, sometimes, that he's surrounded by light. If he was alert enough, if he ever swam up far enough into actual real full-on consciousness, then he would know that the light isn't angels, or incoming aircraft, or Christmas tree lights. Or any of the things he dreams about and around occasionally, as a result of their presence. They're the lights, switches and levers of life support mechanics, tubing, ventilators. All lit up like the aforementioned tree. Hosts, rows, banks of them, enough to populate a spaceship in an old-timey sci-fi show._

_He's aware –- not all the time, but some of the time –- of other things, too. He's aware of the presence of people, who roll and bathe and dress and change him, who murmur between each other often. Those conversations often seem to result in decisions about whether he is coaxed and levered up onto steep pillows, and chokes on a few mouthfuls of babyfood. Often this ordeal is passed over. Yet he's never really hungry. 'Intravenous', they mutter. He dreams on, though._

_Their hands are kind and warm. Most are female, but not all. Some pat his hair, or his shoulder. He feels the presence of sadness, but it's not as if he can do a damn thing about it. Not even to focus his attention on it for long, and it passes. All the things and people around him keep moving, they come and go. But he is perpetual, he stays, he remains. Occasionally a stray thought wanders like a flying bird passing through his brain. He wonders how long he's been here, and how much longer he might remain. He has been here forever, hasn't he? It's always a little too hot. He swelters, but he's used to the discomfort._

_Fleetingly, very rarely, he wonders about Piotr, and Anya and Wanda. Then, sometimes, he wonders who Piotr and Anya and Wanda are. Then he thinks about lights, and murmuring conversation, and the flow continues.)_


	8. Chapter 8

Anya isn't just compliant with Erik's visits to Charles in the hospital, but is instead an eager companion, as often as she can persuade him to take her with him. Erik does feel that she's a little young, and there's really damn all to do on any hospital visit. And it has to be depressing, to sit there beside someone who's been sleeping the sleep of -- well, of the dead -- for three years now, who may never wake up. _Will_ never wake up, the docs say, now. But Erik switches off his attention, when they talk such tripe.

It's funny, because Charles is so silent now, barring the odd moan as he stirs in his sleep. (Erik calls it sleep, not coma or unconsciousness. He's stubborn as hell when it comes to Charles.) Before the accident, though – on a stupid pushbike, and Erik used to have his heart in his mouth every time he saw the idiot swing himself on to it – Charles didn't often shut up talking. He was a motormouth, and his brain was alive, and his hands were always moving. It wasn't surprising that the drums were his instrument. Because they were, of course, the noisiest instrument you could get a hold of.

And Anya only saw him for lessons, drum lessons, when she wanted to learn and the drums weren't Erik's instrument. And for the occasional show, since he and Charles were both occasional contributors, passing through, to the local bands that worked the wedding circuit. That was why he'd thought of Charles, the best drummer he knew of personally, to give her lessons.

And maybe it was a tiny bit of an excuse. An excuse for a bi divorced guy with a little crush going on, to engineer a little more contact with the object of his developing affections. He just wanted to... see Charles a little more often. (Anya probably didn't _really_ need four lessons a week. Not in the beginning, at least. But she was happy with it, certainly. She loved the drums, immediately and instinctively. And she loved Charles too: young, lithe, musical, _noisy_. Chatty as hell and impossible to still or stay or keep your eye on for two seconds together. The most scaldingly, fiercely alive person Erik knows, and he's been half dead these three years. So Anya visits with him, whenever she can, whenever Erik relents.


	9. all I'm aware of in this entire roomful of people is him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the ever-delightful Sophie Kinsella.

Perhaps Erik's a little bit jealous, and it's not like he's in any way proud of that. Charles got on great with the kids, was easily fond with and relaxed around Anya. The drum lessons were the highlight of her week, easy. With Erik, he was a little stiff and polite, even once he'd taken the job at the trust and they saw more of each other. Maybe it was the automatic deferentiality and distance of a younger man for an older guy. Maybe Charles thought of him as being of his own dad's generation. (And Christ, that stung. He only had eleven years on the guy. It wasn't as if he was ready for the knacker's yard.)

Anyway. Anya always wants to come visit, to say hi to Charles even if she's never going to hear it back again. And today, today is the third anniversary of the day of her last lesson, and Charles's last day of walking around in the world and haunting Erik's dreams. So Erik lets her come with, and they walk together, hand in hand, into the hospital entrance. It's a route so familiar to them by now, it's a wonder that they haven't walked a runnel over the worn green carpet of the reception area, as they follow the signs and head on up to the long-term disorders ward.

xxx

_Sometimes Charles feels names trundle slowly through his mind, but more often he sees faces. His mother, and Kurt, both gone now. Sharon in the accident, and Kurt drinking himself to death once she was gone. He gropes vaguely through his mind, looking for family, looking for more. But it doesn't feel like there's anything more than that. Kids he was at school with, guys from bands he's been in and from college, before he dropped out when the fees couldn't be met. After his mother and Kurt cut him off. From the string of dead-end jobs he was working his way out of, with progressive musical and teaching certifications, and building up business and gigs. From his doctorate, when they were dead and couldn't stop him getting at his funds any longer._

_Deep under, all that comes to mind is faces, though. Faces and strains of music. Sometimes he gets a little blip of warm feeling, something vague and affectionate, and it pulls at him awkwardly when he feels that. He has a face glimmer at him, but no name usually._

_Raven, and Erik. These names linger around at the front of his mind, but he can't work out what faces they belong to. They matter, though. Enough to worry him._

_They can't be so very important, though, surely. None of the faces stay with him, haunt him in his dreams. Barring one, anyway: a handsome guy with a slight, unforthcoming smile. Looking down with a self-deprecating little grin. His heart flips, deep under as he is, every time that face keeps him company, for moments that he can't count nor keep track of._


	10. Chapter 10

“He woke up today.” Erik has just now, just this moment, walked onto the ward, to visit the resident in the end-room on the left. He's been visiting here for the last three years, he's practically worn a groove into the hospital linoleum from always taking the same route at the same times on the same days of the week. The nursing and medical staff are so utterly inured to his presence that they don't normally bat an eyelid as he signs in, passes by and heads for his usual destination. Even though he knows every one by name, and remembers their birthdays, and their kids' birthdays, and keeps them sweet. In return they turn a blind eye to the number of visits from a non-family member, non-significant other. Like any non-kin visitor, he's supposed to stick to prescribed hours. Like someone who has the right, he ignores this on a regular basis.

They're used to him, and to Anya, and they don't trouble them or trouble themselves about them. He barely gets a flicker or a nod out of them, not any more. Except today. Because today, charge nurse Jean, tight pants and red hair dye and talons and all, she comes swooping round the side of the nurses' station, and leaps in front of them like a graceful tiger. Erik skids to a halt the same moment that she does, startled and a little bit worried. He's stirred up enough that the actual words that came out of her mouth on her journey to reach him don't register at all. She's just standing in front of him, vibrating and flailing her hands at him. Her blue eyes are wide, and there's a tight pop-eyed little grin on her face.

She looks a little unhinged, frankly. She looks like she left a few marbles behind the desk, and maybe she might want to go back and retrieve some of them for further use. And she doesn't say another word, while Erik has only the vaguest impression that words were being spoken aloud a moment ago. (His mind was on his visit, and if Charles would be sleeping – he always calls it sleeping – peacefully. Or if he would be restless and moaning again, like the last time, which might upset Anya. The doctors swear blind that he's in no pain, that it's merely muscle twitches. Erik can't help but worry. And Anya squeezes his hand, anxiously.)

It's clear, within a split-second, that Jean's waiting for an answer. To...? He offers her an uncomprehending grin. To which she rolls her eyes, and repeats herself. “He woke up! Mr Xavier! _Charles_!”


	11. Chapter 11

What Erik does, he just stands and stares at her for a moment. The ward is pretty noisy, all beeping medical equipment and chatting nurses and patients and visitors. He feels a buzz, like he's vibrating somehow, and there's a low ringing chime in his head. It's like someone hit him over the head with a rock. Like he's not really here, only his body, because his brain feels a billion miles away indeed.

Charles is awake? He's not even taking enough notice to realize that he says it aloud, but he must've because she's answering him.

She's answering him as she chases after him, calling out to his back as he begins to speed up, though. Because he's running down the ward, to Charles' room. And running is strictly forbidden on the ward, but it's not as if that's got any chance of stopping him now. Not now. And Jean runs after him, calling out. “Not right now! He's not awake now, Erik! But he did wake up for a couple of minutes! The doctors have just finished checking him over!”

Well. It would have been useful to have that particular little byte of information ahead of setting off on a giddy excited jog through the length of the ward, probably. Erik disregards her even, until he actually gets to the door of Charles's room. She could be wrong. It could be that Charles was just resting his eyes for a while, if he was awake, if he woke up–-.

Then Erik arrives in the doorway, and stops dead a minute. Stops dead, because the scene that meets him is... exactly the same as always, one hundred percent. The bed, the nice sunlit room, the beeping monitors with their flashing lights, the ventilators. Charles, asleep in the midst of it, hooked up to all of these machines like he's more a cyborg than a man any more.

And asleep, definitely asleep, just as much as he ever was on Erik's last visit, the one before that too. All of them, stretching back these three years since the accident.

Erik's aware, quite aware, that his shoulders are often slumped in a posture of defeat when he leaves the ward after yet another fruitless, heartbreaking visit. The nurses tend to watch him sadly as he goes, any who are currently on duty, and call out soft goodbyes, then murmur sympathetically to each other as the swing doors close behind him.


	12. Chapter 12

(He has to go back and retrieve Anya. Who has chased after him, but not fast enough. He can't meet her eye: to have got her hopes up like this, and let them fall again...) 

His shoulders slump a little extra today, and he holds Anya's hand a little tighter, as he leaves the ward after this visit that was, after all, just like any other visit. It was exactly the same.

xxx

_Charles is usually only very dimly aware of the light around him, the daylight through the wide, high barred glass windows, the white-noise light from the banks of electronic machinery that looms over one side of his bed. It barely registers amongst the higgledy-piggledly haul and sprawl of hyper and meaningless dreams that infest his head. Now, though: for a while now -- and it's so impossible to judge time, there is no time, time is nothing –- but he thinks it's getting brighter. Yes, definitely, brighter._

_And there's something familiar about that, too. Has this happened before? He thinks, now, dimly, that perhaps it has happened before. Even recently._

_Brighter, brighter, brighter. He moans against it: it's hot and uncomfortable, and can't someone turn it off? Someone should turn off that damn light. Something pops inside his chest, and then his head, small explosions, miniature earthquakes: the shock and after-thrills quiet his mind, still his protests against the light. And then it's as if someone turned up the volume switch, as well as the dimmer. Noise levels in his head –- around him? It's so long since he opened his eyes –- abruptly swarm up to a din that's painful. It feels, what, normal. And yet also painful. He's totally unaccustomed to this kind of a racket._

_And someone must be told, some of the staff at the nurses' station that has entered his dreams through whispers and snatched overheard fragments of conversation. They need to get whoever it is to turn the sound down, to behave, to shut the fuck up and if no-one else will say so then Charles will._

_So he_ opens his eyes. And that's a bit of a shock.

Sudden awareness is enough of a jolt. He doesn't feel much desire to chat, in fact, after all. But he's not alone in the room, just the same. There's someone in a white coat with his back to Charles, murmuring an incomprehensible string of medical terms to two solemn young people, perhaps med students. Charles is in hospital: for some reason it seems perfectly reasonable.


	13. Chapter 13

And suddenly he realizes that his throat is dry as sand, dry, and water is _imperative_. So he opens his mouth to call attention to himself, to ask for water. But all that he can produce is a loud and wordless croak. It sounds alien, alarming, and he's not the only one shaken up by it. As soon as soundwaves ripple the air, there's _pandemonium_.

After that his peace is over for a fairly long time. He gets swarmed by medical staff, by nurses. He gets tested, and stabbed with needles, and musing technicians hook him up to further machines and purse their lips at the results., Nurses tinker with his drip, laugh at the idea of solid food -- “Ambitious!” one says.

By the time a purple early evening haze settles in over the distant hills he can see out of the window, he's more exhausted than he ever was when his eyes first opened hours back. But he knows a few things, at least.

He's Charles Xavier, and it's a relief to know even that much. According to the staff, amnesia is a distinct risk with the kind of head injuries he's had. And they've been careful to run him through enough of a battery of questionnaires, interrogation and thorough skull-prodding, to be sure that he's just fine in that respect. He understands what date it is now, he remembers up until the date of his cycling accident –- three years ago, and that's more than a shock. He's just happy to be free of bedsores, and anxiously pats at his legs and ass now and then, just to make sure, furtive and disbelieving.

He can't remember the actual accident, which worries him. But the young doctor who's finally assigned him, junior, slightly flustered, but pleasant-mannered and quite cute, with dark hair falling in his blue eyes, assures him it's normal. “Trauma,” he says solemnly, and nods over his clipboard at Charles, evening coming on and the ward suddenly a fairyland of electric light. “Not unusual at all. I wouldn't worry about it. But we'll be keeping you in for at least a week or two, just to ensure you're in A1 physical condition. I'll make sure you get some psychological counselling at the same time, in case you retrieve any traumatic memories.”


	14. Chapter 14

Of the accident, he clearly means. But even without those memories, Charles feels pretty stirred up. Sufficiently so, for them to take his pulse and blood pressure a second time, when a reading on one of the beeping boxes is unsatisfactory to the doc, and for him to get an extra round of pink pills and more milky drinks and biscuits. It slows his heart-rate, and makes him drowsy enough to feel concerned about sleeping, for fear he might never wake again if he gives into it once more.

But it doesn't stop his mind turning over in a ceaseless thresh, wondering and worrying. Not about medical fees – even though he's been here for three years, the docs said? Christ, and what kind of a bill will that have run up? He shudders to think of it, if he hadn't come into his funds, thanks to his egg-donor's kindly demise. Prior to that, It isn't as if he had any kind of really adequate health insurance before a furniture van collided with his bike and wiped the last three years out of his brain.

He's worried about Erik. About his job. But he doesn't know exactly how to put it, or who to ask...

He lies and worries quietly, dozily, but there isn't much he can do about it, and he has to leave it alone. Besides he needs the time to worry about more evanescent, personal aspects too. Primarily about Erik. And that could barely be more ludicrous.

Oh, hell. If it were even a proper job he's worrying about, even regular part-time hours, if Erik was actually properly his employer... And none of these things are the case, and they weren't even three years ago.

And he aches, besides, and though they've written him up for pain relief, what with his atrophied muscle tissue and joints creaking from disuse, he doesn't want it, won't have it. He needs to think about a few things, and neither pain nor fatigue are going to prevent him. Even though no doubt Erik isn't thinking about him, and it's a joke to even consider it. He barely knew the guy, just gave his daughter a few drum lessons in the sound-proofed basement in their run-down pleasant suburban semi, with Erik himself slung out on the ratty old sofa in the corner and reading the sports pages, while his girl Anya learned the basics of tempo and fills and hi-hat.


	15. Chapter 15

And that was it, the sum total of their interaction. Four or five months of music lessons, not even given directly to Erik, only with him as a casually disengaged third party hanging out there in the interests of responsible parenting. And of course, twice Erik came to see Charles' band play, in local dives and bars. But only after Charles very specifically issued repeated invitations. Because he worried that Erik would only forget about it, if he just mentioned it the _once_. Then Erik, marvellously, offered Charles work at the Jewish studies foundation he ran. A few hours a week, anyway, scratching around for bits of admin and errands, to justify the charitable funds used to employ him.

In fact now, Charles lies uncomfortably twitching in his narrow hospital bed, and feels like his skin is set alight at the memory, the thought of how insistent and flagrant and shameless he was about it. How shameless and _persistent_ , in pursuit. Crushes are the work of the devil, how they make you desperate enough to have you crawling with embarrassment at the memory, years later.

Erik liked him, though, he feels certain enough of that. Enough to come and see him play, enough to bring Anya along to the show that was in a community center and had an all-ages audience. To invite him to supper after a lesson a couple of times, have a beer together. With Anya reading her history essay out loud, the twins snoring on the couch. Anya was obviously pleased, for her divorced dad to have a new adult friend she could show off to, clown around for.

Now, Charles can remember getting _hopeful_ , which also makes him blush scaldingly.


End file.
